And grab that file on my mom.
We make pizza. We all watch a movie. I’m the sleepy, compliant girl. I wait until Tito is snuggled in under a blanket with a nice, hot, buttery bowl of popcorn to announce I’m going to grab a sweater and then I just do it. Guards are most likely to ease up when they have fresh food—that’s the voice of experience. Instead of heading to my room, I slip into the study and grab the folder and a Taser I spotted in Aleksio’s drawer. I put it in my room and grab a sweater and come back out.
It’s a fuck of a thing to sit there and watch the rest of the movie, but this is about keeping things looking right. Again, experience. When the movie ends I go back into my room. They’ve fixed the door, of course. Tito locks me in there, and I dive into the file.
The file is the coroner’s report from 11 years ago—it’s clearly genuine. It even smells genuine. Like an old library book.
I go through the sheets. It’s an autopsy report. That doesn’t make sense—there was never an autopsy of my mother. You don’t autopsy a cancer victim. But according to this document, there was an autopsy. The cause of death is listed as poisoning by a substance I can’t pronounce.
Poisoned.
I stare at it, trying to make sense of it. The doctors said she died of a rare form of cancer. The doctors told me that. But somebody ordered an autopsy the day she died.
Little things from that time flow together. Doctors arguing. The speed with which she was whisked off to that hospice. My father’s strange reluctance for me to raise money for the research for the rare cancer. But I wanted to do it. I needed to do something.
This file says she didn’t have cancer at all.
This file says my mother was murdered.
I sit there, shaken to the core.
Why does Aleksio have this? And why keep it from me? Was Dad covering for somebody? Was Dad involved? Were Aleksio’s people involved?
I try the door and find it locked. When they fixed the door, they reinforced it. My face heats. I’m so done being a prisoner. I need to get out and find the truth. I’m not so stupid as to think Dad’ll give me the answers. There’s a name on the report. I need a phone and a vehicle.
I sleep fitfully. There’s a soft knock at the door around seven in the morning.
“Yeah?” I say.
“You awake?” It’s Tito.
“I’m awake,” I say. “You guys have coffee out there? What’ll it take to get some brought in here?”
“No problem,” Tito says. The footsteps recede.
I have on shoes this time, and the stun gun. I’ve ripped up the sheets into strips, braided them into ropes and hidden them.
Some fifteen minutes later there’s another knock. “Coffee delivery.”
“Please,” I say. “Come in.”
The door opens, and Tito appears. He smiles. He has a tray with kafe turke and a warm scone. “Aleksio and Viktor should be back in a few.”
“Thank you.” I motion to the dresser where I want him to put it. I feel bad for what I’m going to do.
As soon as he sets it down, I jab the stun gun right into his flank. He falls heavily, much as I try to prevent it. I grab my makeshift ropes and bind his hands and ankles. When he rouses I jab him again. I gag him and then tie him to the radiator.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, taking his phone, his revolver, and his money. He looks mad. Aleksio will have a fit.
I slip out and steal through the house. I avoid the back where they’re all smoking; instead I go out the side door. I run up the driveway and hit the fob. The lights on a BMW flash on.
I start it up and drive like hell. When I get a few miles away, I pull over, heart pounding, and call the medical examiner’s office. I ask for Fazli Jashari—that’s the name at the upper right-hand corner of the file. Albanian. The man who signed off. They tell me he’s not in until the afternoon. No, I won’t leave a message.
I Google and get a home address.
Jashari lives in a low flat rambler in a near suburb. Nobody answers at the door, but the car is there. I go around to the back, a sliding door by the kitchen, and I see an older man with thick silver hair and a thick beard. “Hey!” I pound on the glass with my piece, nearly breaking it.
He rushes over and opens it. Every molecule in him seems to freeze. “Mira Nikolla.”
“You’re Fazli Jashari?”
“You know how many people are looking for you? There are rumors…about Aleksio Dragusha…” He searches my face like a man who really wants to know whether it’s true.
“We need to talk. Inside.”
“Does your father know you’re free?”
“Don’t worry about my father. I’m here to talk about my mother.”
He swallows, looks confused.
I raise the revolver, and he backs in.
“Just tell me if Aleksio is back,” he says.
“He’s back.” I set the file on the counter. “Look familiar?”
He just turns and heads through his home.
Don’t I have the gun? I follow him across his place and into his bedroom. He pulls a suitcase from his closet. “I’m glad to see you alive, Mira,” he says.
“You going somewhere?”
“If Aleksio Dragusha’s still alive? Yeah, I’ll be going somewhere, and you should get the fuck out too. You’re the best way for him to hurt your father.” He pulls out a small carry-on. Already packed. A go bag.
“Tell me about this report.”
“Can I ask you one thing first? Are any brothers with him?”
Like hell I’m going to tell him that—especially not that Kiro is alive. If anybody is innocent in all of this, it’s Kiro.
He pulls socks out of a drawer and tosses them onto the bed. “I’m just asking because, if the brothers are together, the fire will rain down from the skies. You know that, right?”
“You’re talking about that prophecy? Why does everybody believe that thing?”
“Because everybody else believes it,” he says. “Why do stock markets collapse? Because everybody thinks everybody else is freaking. Why does everybody believe the Kardashians are somebody? Because everybody else believes it. Are the brothers united?”
“I have the gun here. I’m the one who gets the answers.”
He’s throwing clothes into the suitcase. “You’re a Nikolla. Get out of town. Get out of this thing.” He stops and looks up. “Everyone knows you hate guns.”
“Maybe I hate lies more.”
He goes back to his packing. It’s like he doesn’t even care that I have a gun. “You need to give me a head start.”
“Tell me what happened with my mother.”
He slows in his packing, but he doesn’t turn.
“Talk to me or I’ll shoot something. I swear it. I won’t shoot you, but I’ll shoot something, and then the police will come.”
He turns, finally. “What do you want to know?”
“Was she killed? Poisoned? Is that report accurate?”
“I felt it was.”
“You were paid to change it.”
He frowns. “Shit.”
“By who?”
“Who do you think?”
“My father?” I try for a steady voice. “Did he kill her?”
He stuffs a balled pair of socks into his case. “That wasn’t for me to know. I changed the findings. That was my part.”
“Paid by my father.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about what they found in her. Tell me what killed her.”
“Designer pharma.”
“He made you cover it up. He was either responsible or complicit.”
Jashari keeps packing.
My heart feels like it’s cracking apart. Us against the world. Dad and me. A family. Even learning about what he did to Aleksio’s family, there was this tiny part of me that held on to Dad being a good guy. Even when he withheld that last lead until he thought my finger was gone, I held on.
“So you just let them get away wit
h it.” My own rage sounds weird to my ears.
“Yes,” he says. “They paid me to let them get away with it. The DA who ordered the autopsy was found in pieces. So yeah, they paid me, but I probably would have helped if he simply asked me. And I think you know why—I have children, grandchildren. You know what your father is. This isn’t a good time to be in denial.”
“I’m not in denial. Excuse me if—” Excuse me if I just found out my father probably killed my mother. I think of the way they used to fight. The secrecy. The whispers. I know from my job that the child needs to believe in the goodness of the parent. The love of the parent. Even in the worst cases of abuse, they create fictions. Somehow the parent loves them.
I wipe angry tears from my cheeks. “Did you help him fake the deaths of the Dragusha boys?”
“I’m done talking. Shoot me if you need to.”
Of course he did. He asked whether the brothers are together; it means he knows they’re all alive. “I guess I should be happy my dad didn’t have the balls to kill infants.”
“He does love you,” Jashari says.
I feel as hollow as his words.
“You’re upset. Just get out of town.” He goes to a closet and yanks out a tennis racket. “Go far. That’s the best and last advice I give you. If Aleksio had you, I don’t know how you got away. But you did. Take this chance and go.” He shoves it into his case. “Aleksio wouldn’t come back around if he wasn’t here for blood. This is where you save yourself.”
“Like you.”
“My name’s on their death certificates. They’ll see that sooner or later and figure it was me who put the sand in their caskets. They’re going to want to bring down everyone who was connected with taking their family and their birthright.” He leaves the room and comes back with a steaming mug of coffee. “You take cream?”
I barely understand the question.
He puts the mug in my hand and zips up his bag. “I’m out of here. You need to clear your head and make your move. You can stay here a while, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” He glances at his phone.
I stare at the folder. “I thought he loved her.”
“He loved you,” the man says. “You were a beautiful girl. Such a good girl. They both loved you.”
“She loved me.”
Jashari leaves me standing in his kitchen. Just walks out the back door.
They say you only become truly adult when you’ve lost both of your parents.
I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s more like you become truly adult when you’ve lost your illusions about your parents.
There’s nothing I want to do more than confront my father. To rage at him and make him face me and tell me the truth. I always thought Bloody Lazarus was the psycho, but Dad covered up the truth of Mom’s death. Somebody killed my mother, and my own father helped them get away with it. Or worse—he killed her. Could he have done it? The question turns me inside out.
And deep down I know the answer is yes. He probably did.
I find an unopened box of corn flakes on the counter and pretty much suck them down. I’m in a state of shock.
Confronting him would be reckless. I can’t be reckless now.
Tito’s phone vibrates at one point—it comes up as A. I’m sure that means Aleksio. Aleksio calling Tito. I don’t answer. Are they back yet?
I get back in the BMW around lunchtime and drive. I don’t know where I’m going until I find myself at the graveyard. I buy daisies at the little stand outside the cemetery, and I go and tuck them into the side of Mom’s grave and settle in on my usual spot right in front of the stone, right up close. I pick up a fallen maple leaf, brilliant orange, and set it next to the daisies.
“Mom.” I put my palm to the gravestone. I feel so raw, like I’ve lost her all over again, and so full of rage for Dad it makes me queasy. Could he have had a hand in it? Even going near the question in my mind makes me feel physically ill.
I think how scared she was at the end—more for me than herself, I think. The supposed illness took her like wildfire, but she cared for me to the end. And he stood by and watched. Did he know it was poison and not cancer? How could he not?
Everything is too bright. Feels too surreal. I try to shut him out of my mind. I slide my hand along the cold stone, trying to feel her. “I just miss you so much.”
There’s a chill in the air. Mom always loved autumn.
“Aleksio’s back. He’s the same. Beautiful and wild and loyal. Always getting into something. Such a big, fierce heart. You always liked him. You still would.” I pick up another leaf and twirl it. “Things are good at the center.” I go on about New York. How Chicago is so much better, but I’m making new friends. It’s hard not to keep focusing on Dad, though. Instead of feeling love for Mom, I’m feeling rage for Dad.
I wander out of there and sit in the BMW in the nearly empty cemetery parking lot. Tito’s phone is vibrating. A again.
Suddenly a car pulls up in the space next to me, which I don’t like at all, being that the lot is mostly vacant. I lock the doors and start up the car. I catch sight of the driver.
One of Dad’s men. No way.
With shaking hands I get the thing into drive. Another car pulls up—right in front of me.
I reverse and smash into something behind me—another car. There’s a knock on the passenger window. It’s Rondo, one of Dad’s enforcers.
I shake my head.
He shoves a slim piece of metal into the door and in a flash, it’s open. “Mira!” He slides in. “Your father has been worried sick about you!”
“Get out.”
“You need to come with us. We’re getting you to safety.”
“I don’t need to go to safety.”
“Your dad’s at the Beverly Inn. Come on.”
“I have one errand… I’ll drive there on my own. I hardly need an escort.”
Rondo shakes his head.
How did they find me? Did Jashari do one last favor for Dad? Fuck! Can I be any more naïve?
The passenger door opens and Lazarus’s brother Ioannis slides in and slips the gun from my pocket, like taking candy from a baby. Then he reaches for the keys in the ignition. I snatch them out and he grabs my fist.
“Give the keys to Ioannis,” Rondo says.
“No! Leave me! I said I’d come—”
“Orders,” Rondo says as Ioannis pries the keys from my fist. “You can’t know how upset and worried he is.”
My heart pounds. “I’m not going.”
Rondo closes a hand around my wrist. “I’d prefer to bring you uninjured.”
Another car rolls up, blocking mine from behind. I look around wildly, knowing this isn’t going to be voluntary. I yank my hand away. “Fine.”
I’m ushered into the back of the town car. “Dad is not going to be happy when he hears how you treated me,” I say.
Nothing.
Ioannis gets in back with me.
I look away from him, staring out the window. We’re heading downtown. Afternoon rush hour slows the traffic to a crawl. It’s nearly four by the time we make it into the hushed, dark lobby with the twin stallion statues and small fountain. The desk clerks key the elevator for the top floor.
Dad has a penthouse suite at this place that he sometimes uses. The elevator lurches upward. The ride seems fast. Something’s not right.
The doors slide open to a small hallway with a few sets of double doors. Rondo guides me into the living room area, and there’s Bloody Lazarus with a big smile on his hard, angular face. He’s surrounded by a handful of his soldiers and lieutenants.
My heart pounds. People are looking at me funny. The guys I know well aren’t saying anything. As if they’re holding their breath. I don’t see Dad.
Lazarus clasps his hands over his suit jacket, beaming like the psycho that he is. People who don’t know Lazarus think he has a nice smile, but when you know him, you know his smile is never nice.
“Mira. Always a breath of fresh air. Look w
ho’s here, Aldo.”
I hear a wheezing sound from the corner of the room. “Mira.”
Dad is slumped in the corner of the room, pale, wheezing. He’s in a bed of curtains below a tilted curtain rod, as if he pulled them down.
I rush to his side. “Dad!”
“Kitten.”
All my anger evaporates, seeing him in danger. “Is it your heart?”
Stupid question. Of course.
I pull away the curtains and loosen his tie. “Did anybody call 911? He needs medical attention!” I look around at the dozen guys just standing there. “What the fuck?” I take out Tito’s phone. I don’t know the code but you can always dial 911.
Lazarus comes over and snatches it from my hand. “I don’t think so, Kitten.” He slips it in his pocket. “Say your goodbyes.”
They won’t help him? My blood goes cold, and I see this for what it is: a takeover. All these men are loyal to Bloody Lazarus now.
Why did they even keep him alive? In case they needed persuasion to get me here? Of course.
I look into Dad’s eyes. He’s in pain. “Do you have your pills?”
He moves his hand then and I see the blood he’s been stopping up with his hand, blood all over the white shirt under his jacket. Gutshot. “I tried to stop him—I’d hoped you’d be safe. But Jashari—the ME—he called me to tell me you’d been there, and Lazarus…”
Lazarus was in control and sent people to get me. And predictably, I went to the cemetery.
“Daddy.” Tears blur my vision. “Oh, Dad.” I take his other hand. He feels cold. I should hate him. Why can’t I make myself hate him?
“I know what I did,” he whispers. “I know what Jashari told you.”
“Why?”
“She was going to take you away from me…never let me see you again. I couldn’t bear that.”
“So you killed her?”
“I was weak. I was wrong. I’m so sorry—I never meant to…”
I’m sobbing. My voice sounds gravelly. “She was my mother!”
“I won’t ask for your forgiveness—it was unforgivable, what I did.” His breathing is fucked up. I squeeze his hand. “Every day I died a little, to see you sad. But you bounced back. Always so fierce and optimistic, my Mira. And the way you knew your own mind—you were a gift to me I never deserved.”
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